by Jeff Lindsay
“And if we survive the splash?” I asked.
“Then we watch for his men,” he said. “Whatever they do, they’ll be very close, watching for us. We find them first.”
I sighed again, wondering whether Brian really believed it would be that simple. “All right, fine, we wait,” I said. At least I could do that without too much effort. And in the meantime…“I can use the time to try to stay out of jail.”
“Oh, certainly,” he said. “You do what you must. When something happens, I’ll call you.” He hesitated slightly, and then, looking a little uneasy, he added, “But do watch your back, brother.”
“I plan to,” I said.
He nodded. “What are you going to do?” he asked.
“The whole case against me is pure fiction, made up by Anderson,” I said. “If I can find something to show he tampered with evidence—”
“He did tamper, didn’t he?” Brian asked.
“Only when he didn’t just invent it,” I said. “So I thought I would have a quiet chat with Vince Masuoka.”
Brian nodded. “That would certainly be a good place to start,” he said. “He seemed very…indignant?”
“Perhaps he still is,” I said.
He still was. I called him from my car after Brian left me with a promise to get in touch this evening, and Vince answered right away, speaking in a kind of shocked and reverent whisper. “Dexter, my God,” he said. “I can’t believe—I mean, I really tried to—Shit. I can’t talk now. I’m in the lab, and there’s—”
“Can you meet me for lunch?” I said.
“I think so, if I—Yes. I mean, I’ll do what I can to—I can get away around noon?”
“Good,” I said. “Meet me at Lunar Sushi.”
“I will,” he said in an eager whisper. “I mean, I’ll try. And if—Oh! Somebody’s coming…!”
“See you at noon, Vince,” I said, and broke the connection.
I had three hours to fill before then, and not a great deal to fill them with. I thought about going back to my hotel room, and firmly rejected the idea on humanitarian grounds. If I wasn’t going to rest, then the most natural thing would be to eat. But I had just eaten, and I would be eating more when I met with Vince, so it really seemed like a bit much to kill time between meals by eating. I thought about it anyway. After all, doughnuts are not really substantial, are they? Very little protein in the average bear claw, in spite of the name. And since I hadn’t partaken of the garish sprinkles my brother gorged himself on, I’d had nothing green to eat, either.
I remembered a map I’d drawn in my cell, after days of unspeakable swill they laughingly referred to as “food” at the TGK. The map traced a route that wound its way through South Miami, into the Grove, and then over to Miami Beach. At every point along the route where there was a restaurant I liked, I had placed an ornate little star and a small icon of the appropriate kind of food: tiny pizzas, sushi rolls, stone crabs, and so on. It had been my whimsical thought that if I ever saw the clear light of freedom again, I would trace the whole course, stopping at each star to sample their icon.
I could start my trip now, work my way through the first four or five, and end up close to Lunar Sushi just in time for my lunch with Vince. The idea had its charms—but on the whole, I couldn’t make myself believe that gorging myself was the best way to spend my time when both Life and Liberty hung so tenuously in the balance, presumably to be joined at any moment by Pursuit of Happiness. I put the thought away.
What I really needed to do was to keep a low profile, avoid any chance of discovery by either the Good Guys, as played by Anderson, or the Bad Guys, starring Raul and a cast of thousands. Since I had already ruled out returning to my miserable, bone-breaking hotel room, there were very few options left to me. I could always take out my boat; I’d be relatively safe in the middle of Biscayne Bay, and I would see anyone approaching. But the odds were fifty-fifty that Anderson at the least, and maybe Raul’s team as well, knew about the boat, and had it watched. It wasn’t worth the risk.
That didn’t leave too many places—to be perfectly honest, it left exactly none that actually sprang to mind. So I drove north, since that was the direction I was pointed in when I left the doughnut shop. At least it led me farther away from the torture equipment laughingly referred to as a bed that crouched in my hotel room awaiting its prey.
The morning rush hour was dying down at last, and the traffic moved easily enough all the way up to Le Jeune Road. Still with no definite goal in mind, I turned left and headed toward Coconut Grove.
As I drove along through the center of the Grove, I marveled yet again at how much had changed since I grew up here. Most of the shops I had known then were gone, replaced by different, new shops filled with totally different overpriced and pointless items. Of course, there were a few landmarks that hadn’t changed since the dawn of time. The park was still pretty much as it had been, and across from it the library was still there, though it was now partially hidden by the newer buildings that had sprung up around it. I had spent many happy hours in the library, trying to find a book that would explain to me once and for all how to act human—and when I was a little older, a book that might tell me why I should bother.
As I turned onto McFarlane Road and headed down the hill toward the library, I wondered whether it might not be a good place to lay low for a few hours. It was cool, quiet, and had both Internet and reading matter aplenty. And then, right in front of the building, I saw that there was a parking space open. In the memory of living man, this had never happened before, so I took it as a sign from God and made an immediate U-turn. I slid into the spot and parked, and thinking that I might do a little bit of diligent low-profile digging while I waited, I grabbed up the folder of legal papers I had been given at the jail when they returned my stuff.
I locked the car, put an enormous amount of money into the meter, and went into the library. I found a nice, quiet spot over by the back window and sat down to go through my folder. What with finding corpses and so on, I’d been far too busy to open the folder; I hadn’t even glanced at it yet. I’d assumed that it was copies of the great heap of paperwork that is required to do absolutely anything nowadays, especially within the bureaucratic hell that is Official Miami. I knew from experience that the Department of Corrections demanded many pages of mind-numbing trivia even for something as simple as getting a box of paper clips, and I expected that the actual release of a prisoner would generate several reams of stilted prose.
But when I opened the folder, the first clump of papers I saw on top of the heap did not carry the imprint of Corrections. Instead, the letterhead said, Department of Children and Families.
For a long moment I just stared, and then my very first thought was a rather plaintive, But I’m an adult! And then luckily, a couple of gray cells floated up to the surface and suggested that some overworked and underbrained bureaucrat had obviously stuffed somebody else’s papers in my folder by mistake. It was a simple, laughable error, and no doubt I would even laugh at it someday, if I lived. I picked up the offending paperwork, intending to fling it in the nearest receptacle—and my eye caught a single word: Astor.
I paused, long enough to see that this word was joined to another, Morgan, and right next to it there were more: Cody Morgan, and Lily Anne Morgan. Since these were the names of my three children, it seemed far too much to write it off as coincidence, so I put the paper back down on the table in front of me and looked it over.
After a quick examination of several pages of baroque legal language, I concluded that the party of the first part, one Dexter Morgan, having acted contra bonos mores as well as cum gladiis et fustubus was now de facto and de jure a persona non grata in his role as legal guardian of said minor children. Further deponent sayeth that the party of the second part, hight Deborah Morgan, acting as amicus paterna in uberrima fides, did solemnly swear and affirm cum hoc ergo propter hoc that she would therefore ipso facto assume completely and totally the role of guard
ian ad litem, in loco parentis. The party of the first part hereby confirms that this ad idem agreement shall supersede all others and in witness thereof affixes his signature, quod erat demonstrandum, et pedicabo te.
Or words to that effect; there was an awful lot, and not all of it was in such nice Latin, but the gist of it was that I was signing over all my rights and privileges as sole surviving parent of Cody, Astor, and Lily Anne, and naming Deborah as their new mommy, which was probably in the document somewhere as materfamilias.
In my humble opinion, it is a very great credit to me that this time I did not blink or gape, as I had done so much lately. I remembered right away that when Deborah had finally come to see me in jail, she had asked me to sign over custody of the kids. It had been the sole reason that she finally made herself overcome her complete, violent, and totally understandable nausea caused by looking at me.
Of course, things were a little different now—I was no longer in jail. It was true that I would probably return there, unless I was chopped into bits by savage cartel assassins before then. Even so, did I really want to do this? Completely abandon all my paternal rights and privileges?
My first thought was a mean-spirited, No! The kids were mine, and no one was going to take them away from me, not Deborah or anyone else. But when I reflected on that for just a few moments, I realized that this was not a well-thought-out response.
How did I really feel about my kids? Of course, only Lily Anne was truly my child, biologically speaking. But Cody and Astor were Children of Darkness, just like me. I was their spiritual father, as well as legal, and I had promised to set their feet safely onto the Dark Path. I had failed miserably so far—just never got around to it, what with the frantic pace of school and homework and dentist and pediatrician and new sneakers. It was always, Yes, of course, later, and later never came. Why is it that there’s never enough time to do anything, unless it’s so immediate that not doing it results in instant catastrophe?
It was hard to feel guilty about failing to train them to be successful predators, but I did manage a little regret, at least. And Lily Anne—she was untouched by Shadow, a near-perfect creature of burbling pink light. Quite impossible to believe that she carried my DNA, but she did; Lily Anne, alone in all the world, would take the entire genetic wonder that was Dexter and carry it into the future, so that fabulous me would not be lost from the gene pool, and that was a very nice thought.
But she would do that just as well without me—perhaps better. In truth, didn’t she deserve something better than a father like me? Deborah would provide a positive role model, something I could never hope to do. And Cody and Astor would be who they were, who they had to be, whether I was there or not. So the only real question was, Did I really want to be there? Enough to fight it out with Deborah and the courts? Was I really that protective of my rights and privileges?
I thought about that for a good two minutes, and to be perfectly honest, I only thought of one or two rights, and I couldn’t think of any privileges at all. It had been my experience that fatherhood was mostly a matter of suffering the insufferable, tolerating the intolerable, and changing diapers. Where was the joy in the endless screeching, door slamming, and name-calling? Was it a privilege to sacrifice time, money, and sanity to a snarling horde of sticky ingrates?
I tried very hard to come up with a few fondly remembered moments of joy. There didn’t seem to be any. There was once when I got home late and I was just in time to keep Cody from eating the last piece of Rita’s Orange Chicken. I’d been happy then, or at least relieved. And another time Astor threw her shoes at me, and one of them missed. That had been good, too.
But joy? Actual parental ecstasy? I couldn’t recall any.
If I was truly honest with myself, which is not as easy as it sounds, I had to admit that I didn’t really enjoy fatherhood. I simply endured it, because it was part of the disguise that hid Dexter the Wolf from the world of sheep I lived in. And as far as I could tell, the kids merely endured me, too. I was not a good father. I tried, but it was strictly pro forma. My heart was never in it, and I was just no good at it.
So if I didn’t really want to be Dear Old Dad, and if the kids were truly better off without me—why was I waffling?
No real reason. I signed.
TWELVE
I called Deborah to tell her I had signed the custody papers. She was at work, of course, and may have had a very good reason for declining to answer my call. Perhaps she was busy shooting someone, or maybe wading through viscera at a crime scene. Whatever the truth, she did not answer, and I could not help thinking that she just didn’t want to taint her righteous ears with the dreadful pollution of my voice. I left a message, and headed for my lunch appointment with Vince Masuoka.
Lunar Sushi was a newish place in North Bay Village. It sat in a strip mall, in between a grocery store and a sports bar. It really should have been a little bit tacky, considering this less than ideal location. But they’d put quite a bit of money into the decor, making it look like the kind of chic, upscale place where you expect to see movie stars drop in for some kajiki and a Kirin.
At this time of day, in midweek, there was no problem finding a good parking spot, and I was tucked in at the bar with a pot of very hot green tea when Vince came stumbling in at twelve minutes past noon. He stood in the doorway for a moment, blinking away the effects of the bright sunlight outside and goggling around the cool dark of the interior. It was kind of fun to watch him stand there and gawp, but it was just a little cruel, too—perhaps that was part of what made it fun in the first place. Still, he was here, after all, to do me a good turn, so I took pity on him and waved.
“Over here, Vince,” I called.
He actually flinched when I said his name, and raised his hands to make a shushing gesture. But he apparently realized that was a bit much, and he dropped his hands again and came wobble-stepping rapidly across the floor. “Dexter,” he said in the same hushed tone he’d used on the phone. He put his hands on my shoulders and, to my complete astonishment, he leaned forward, putting his head down on my chest and giving me a hug. “Oh, my God, I’m so glad you’re okay.” He took his head off my chest and looked at me. “You are okay, aren’t you?”
“Too soon to tell,” I said, wondering how I could pry myself out of his strange and uncharacteristic embrace. Vince was no more a touchy-feely-huggy guy than I was. In fact, one of the reasons I liked him was that I could tell he was faking most of his Human Behavior, too, just like I was. I was merely a little better at it. But as far as I could remember, we’d never even shaken hands—and here he was locking me in a stifling and very awkward clinch.
But happily for me, he gave me one last quick squeeze and then stepped back. “Well, you’re out of jail,” he said. “That’s the important thing.” He stood only about two feet away and looked at me with a weird expression, kind of a yearning, searching gaze, as if he was trying to find some hidden pain in my face, and he might cry when he found it.
“I am out,” I said. “At least for now.”
Vince blinked. “Is there some—I mean, they can’t just…uh…” he said, stumbling to a halt and looking over my shoulder.
I turned. The sushi chef had appeared noiselessly on the far side of the bar and stood there regarding us with solemn expectation. I looked back at Vince. “Let’s put in an order and move to a booth,” I said. “So we can talk.”
Vince nodded and stepped up to the bar. And then, to my utter astonishment, he began to make a series of harsh and sibilant sounds in the direction of the chef. Even more surprisingly, the chef stood a little straighter, smiled, and made some very similar sounds back at Vince. They both laughed—and then actually bowed at each other—and the chef scurried away, a wicked-looking blade already raised in his hand. He began slapping great chunks of raw fish onto his chopping block and attacking them with his knife.
I looked at Vince, and it occurred to me again that I really didn’t know anything at all about him. “W
as that Japanese?” I asked him.
He turned and looked at me as if I was the one speaking a foreign language. “Huh?” he said.
“Those noises you just made,” I said. “You were speaking Japanese with the sushi chef?”
He looked a little puzzled. “You did know that Masuoka is a Japanese name, right?” He shrugged. “What did you expect?”
I might have pointed out that Morgan is a Welsh name and I didn’t speak a word of that language, but it seemed like a rather low-priority observation. “Let’s get a booth,” I said.
“Oh, right,” he said, looking startled and furtive again, and I led him to a booth in the back, sliding in so I faced the front door. Vince climbed in across from me, and glanced all around the restaurant with a wide-eyed, paranoid glare. If anyone actually was looking for suspicious behavior, they would definitely know that they should start with Vince. But maybe he had a real reason, other than a fevered imagination.
“Vince,” I said, “you weren’t followed, were you?”
He snapped his head back around and looked at me. “What?” he said. “Why would you—Did you see somebody?”
“No, no,” I said, trying to sound confident and soothing at the same time. “You’re just acting like you expect to be shot at any moment.”
He shook his head. “You don’t know,” he said. “I mean, the things that have been going on since you—” He leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “Dexter, I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s gotten so—Anderson is completely off the reservation. He’s gone rogue, and nobody seems to—It’s like they all want him to do it, because they want you to be convicted!”
“What was Anderson doing?”
Vince looked around again. A bead of sweat formed on his forehead and began to roll slowly down his face. “He’s falsifying records,” he said in a strangled whisper. “Putting in fake evidence and forging the signatures and—” He fluttered his hands in dismay. They looked like two spastic birds who’d forgotten how to fly. “Dexter, Jesus, it’s illegal. Like a felony, and he’s just doing it and nobody does anything about it. It’s like—”
